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Human Performance Management – Behavioral Drivers

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StrategyDriven Human Performance Management ArticleOrganizational outcomes evolve from management decisions and employee actions. Understanding what shapes those decisions and actions provides causal insight to why particular outcomes occur and reveals those things that can be changed in order to produce different results.

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Additional Information

On the surface, it would appear that examination of the organization’s direction setting statements; documented processes and standards; and physical workplace environment will reveal the drivers of its members’ decisions and actions. This could not be more untrue.

Organizational documents often reflect what is deemed as ‘proper’ by society instead of being truly reflective of executive and manager intent. Identifying the real drivers of individual and collective behavior requires scrutiny into the unspoken policies – the actions – of the organizations leaders. When leader actions do not align with the written or spoken word, it is the actions that will always drive the behaviors. For additional information, read the following StrategyDriven articles:

Return to the Human Performance Management Forum

About the Author

Nathan Ives, StrategyDriven Principal is a StrategyDriven Principal and Host of the StrategyDriven Podcast. For over twenty years, he has served as trusted advisor to executives and managers at dozens of Fortune 500 and smaller companies in the areas of management effectiveness, organizational development, and process improvement. To read Nathan’s complete biography, click here.

Does Your Business Have True Leaders?

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Every single employee is important in an organization, but there is nothing more vital than having leaders to drive change and manage day-to-day work. These leaders might be supervisors, managers or partners, but they are hugely important regardless of what department of the business they work in. So it is time to figure out whether your business has true leaders! If you feel there is room for improvement, here are a few ways you can change the tide:

Invest in leadership programs
The first thing you can do is to take advantage of leadership program benefits. There are many different programs run by trained professionals, so you should be able to find one that suits your style of doing business. Your staff will learn invaluable skills that will help them to move your business forward over the coming weeks, months and years. They might need to learn to be better at delegation, or they might need to break out of their shell and stop being so shy. Other people can be too direct, so for them it could be learning to tone down their personality when in an office environment. Either way, this is one of the best investments you could make for your team.

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About the Author

From her 25 years in business, Elizabeth Hill aims to pass on knowledge and skills gained in that time through her writing. She loves walks in the countryside, spending time with family and friends, and is ever so ‘slightly’ addicted to coffee.

The Advisor’s Corner – Am I an At-Risk Leader?

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At-risk leaderQuestion:

Is there a way to tell if I’m an ‘at-risk’ leader?

StrategyDriven Response: (by Roxi Hewertson, StrategyDriven Principal Contributor)

Sure. You can ask yourself the questions below to get a good start and then you can and should regularly ask for direct or anonymous constructive feedback from your direct reports, peers, leader and others. You attitudes and behaviors are the biggest differentiators for leadership success. The four well researched core emotional intelligence metrics of: Self-Awareness, Self-Management, Social Awareness and Relationship Management are directly correlated with successful or failing leadership.

Here are some key attitudes and behaviors to pay attention to because just being proficient in your technical area of expertise ignores the fact that a leader’s success is highly dependent on others’ contributions.

Ask yourself, do I…?

Read/understand emotions and recognize the impact of them on self and others. By developing an accurate view of, and aptly managing, one’s own emotional responses to situations, the rest of you skills and talents are magnified and leveraged. You regularly seek feedback and acknowledge when your impact and intent are out of synch. ?

Know your strengths and limitations. The best leaders understand they can never know and do everything… and don’t pretend to. Instead, they recognize what they are good at and leverage those skills. You surround themselves with people who are smarter and more experienced in areas where you have gaps, and you listen to them.

Know and have a good sense of your own self-worth and capability. There is a big divide between confidence and arrogance. Confidence comes from a strong sense of self-worth and self-awareness. Arrogance comes from fear in many cases, and a sense of entitlement in others. You are confident based on an objective, not assumed point of view.

Think and act with optimism – see the ‘upside.’ There are two kinds of world view attitudes people project in the world—those who think and act through the lens of abundance, and those who think and act through a lens of scarcity. You go for solutions, new ideas, and silver linings, even in the worst of times. You may change course, but you never give up. You thoughtfully navigate your staffers to a better place – often to places they didn’t know or believe possible.

See and seize opportunities for contributing to the greater good. Despite conventional thinking, great leaders have low ego needs precisely because of their solid confidence and self-worth. You don’t waste time and energy shining up your image. Your integrity is without question. You are willing to partner with others and you listen with an objective and compassionate for the greater good of the organization.

Or Do I…?

Discount others’ emotions and perspective. Failing leaders don’t pick up on other people’s signals. Or, if they do, they don’t care, demonstrating a fundamental lack of empathy and social awareness. You cannot be a good leader without empathy, period.

Miss key organizational clues, norms, decision networks and politics. ?These ‘leaders’ have very little emotional intelligence in terms of self-awareness and organizational awareness. You are missing clues, haven’t developed a wide network, and operate more like individual contributor than a leader.

Blame others for outcomes. Failing leaders don’t ask; they tell. You need to make someone wrong to be right. The difference between accountability and blame is the way the issue or problem is approached. You go for blame not solution.

Avoid dealing with and resolving conflicts. ?Failing leaders avoid dealing with conflicts and don’t provide constructive feedback to others. They duck key relationship issues. You often think, “If I ignore it, it will go away.”

Isolate myself and/or my team from others in the organization. You think you and/or your immediate team are better/smarter/righter than everyone else. These leaders are happiest in their ‘silo,’ rarely sharing resources or knowledge. You believe no one understands you or your work.

About the Author

Leadership authority Roxana (Roxi) Hewertson is a no-nonsense business veteran revered for her nuts-and-bolts, tell-it-like-it-is approach and practical, out-of-the-box insights that help both emerging and expert managers, executives and owners boost quantifiable job performance in various mission critical facets of business. Through AskRoxi.com, Roxi — “the Dear Abby of Leadership” — imparts invaluable free advice to managers and leaders at all levels, from the bullpen to the boardroom, to help them solve problems, become more effective and realize a higher measure of business and career success.

The StrategyDriven website was created to provide members of our community with insights to the actions that help create the shared vision, focus, and commitment needed to improve organizational alignment and accountability for the achievement of superior results. We look forward to answering your strategic planning and tactical business execution questions. Please email your questions to [email protected].

Blurred Lines: Setting Healthy Boundaries at Work

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Success in the workplace depends on your ability to relate effectively to people. Research shows that 60-80% of all difficulties in organizations stem from strained relationships between employees, not from deficits in an individual employee’s skill or motivation.1

Difficult workplace relationships are far more than a nuisance; they can cause anxiety, burnout, clinical depression and even physical illness.

Healthy relationships at work can propel you to great heights of achievement; dysfunctional or toxic ones will tether you to mediocrity. When we mismanage relationships, the fall-out affects productivity and quite possibly our ability to advance. Your success at work depends on your ability to set the kinds of boundaries that encourage mutual respect and keep the focus on productivity.

7 Tale-Tell Signs of a Toxic Relationship

You’re in a toxic professional relationship with a boss or peer when they:

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About the Author

Van MoodyField expert Van Moody is the author of The People Factor (an upcoming release by publisher Thomas Nelson) and a motivational speaker who advises on matters related to relationships as they pertain to friends, family, significant others and the workplace. He is a ‘People Scholar’ who helps others build their ‘Relational IQ’ to achieve success at home, in their social circles, and in business. He may be reached online at www.vanmoody.com.

Reference

1. Association for Psychological Type International, APTI

What are you thinking? Here are a few of my thoughts!

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The minute I get a thought, I capture it. For the past year or so, I’ve been texting myself through voice dictation. It works. It’s the same way I am writing this column. Voice to text. It works.

I’m about to show you, and share with you, some of those random thoughts. They are in no particular order, and as I paste them into this word document I’m reading them aloud and altering them. (That’s how I edit.) I’m reading them and expanding them on the spot so they become even more valuable and applicable to a salesperson. You.

ON QUESTIONS
When someone asks you a question, ask yourself, “Why are they asking this, and what does this mean in terms of this person moving toward a purchase?”

There’s a motive behind every question a prospect asks. And that motive is the sales driver. In reality they’re thinking to themselves, if this function works, I can increase my sales. That’s the motive, not the function.

For example, they may ask you, “Can this function take place?” If you answer, “Yes,” then you’ve gone right past sale. If you answer yes and then ask, “What will this function lead to?” or “What makes this function important to you?” you will then uncover the real buying motive. In sales this is known as the hot button. The reality is, it’s your money.

WHAT ARE YOU THINKING?

  • In sales, the largest chasm is the difference between knowing and doing. You already know everything; the problem is you’re not doing it.
  • How many of you cannot afford to buy what it is you are selling? And how does that affect your belief system? And how does thataffect your passion to close the sale?
  • Whoever said, “Thoughts are things,” only had it partially correct. The better statement is, “Thoughts become things when plans are made, belief is strong, and action is taken.”
  • In a game of ‘sales chess’ you have to be thinking at least two moves ahead or you’ll likely lose your queen.

WHAT DO THEY REALLY WANT?
Your customer doesn’t want to buy a ball bearing. They want to keep their plant producing. Customers want outcome, not product. Your customer does not want a can of paint, brushes, and rollers. Your customer wants a beautiful room or a updated look to the exterior of their home. Sell OUTCOME, not product.

BE SPECIFIC.
Is your presentation full of generalizations or customization? If you only generalize for the enterprise and generalize about the business, you will lose. But if you customize for your customer, or their customer, they can visualize what’s in it for THEM, and they will buy.

SHOW ME THE MONEY, NOT THE PERCENTAGE
Don’t give me a percentage. Give me a dollar amount. EXAMPLE: You say, “We lost 7% of our customers this year.” Really? HOW MUCH IS THAT IN DOLLARS? That will make you mad. Large companies refer to this as “churn.” I define churn as management’s inability to keep customers loyal. And these same companies who call it churn only present it as a percentage. Our churn rate is 3.2%. Why doesn’t management have the intestinal fortitude to present that as a dollar amount? Answer: They don’t want anyone to know, and it places the burden on salespeople to replace the 3.2% in order to get to last year’s numbers. Not good.

WHAT’S THE REAL CHALLENGE WITH CRM?
Customer relationship management is the most purchased, least-used, and least-adopted software in the history of computers. Why? The salesperson looks at it as management’s tool for accountability. CRM adoption rates would triple if salespeople viewed it as something that could help them make a sale.

If you have CRM software for your sales and service people, and you have a 72% adoption rate, that means 28% of your sales team, and/or your service team, did NOT adopt it, and most likely hate it. I feel reasonably certain that of the 72% that did adopt it, a high percentage of them look at it as something they ‘had to do’ rather than something that would help them.

ON IMAGINATION AND WOW!
Salespeople are missing huge opportunities for engagement and opportunities to gain response from customers by not being imaginative or creative in their communications.

  • Show me a sales script, and I’ll show you a boring message.
  • Show me a slide deck prepared by marketing, and I’ll show you a boring message.
  • Show me an email prepared by a salesperson, and I’ll show you a boring message.

Where’s the value? Show me the value. Where’s the WOW? Show me the WOW! If you show me WOW and value, I will respond, I will engage, I will connect, and I will buy.

Those are my thoughts and ideas of the moment. All captured the second they occurred to me. Hope they get you thinking, taking action, and capturing yours.

Reprinted with permission from Jeffrey H. Gitomer and Buy Gitomer.

About the Author

Jeffrey Gitomer is the author of The Sales Bible, Customer Satisfaction is Worthless Customer Loyalty is Priceless, The Little Red Book of Selling, The Little Red Book of Sales Answers, The Little Black Book of Connections, The Little Gold Book of YES! Attitude, The Little Green Book of Getting Your Way, The Little Platinum Book of Cha-Ching, The Little Teal Book of Trust, The Little Book of Leadership, and Social BOOM! His website, www.gitomer.com, will lead you to more information about training and seminars, or email him personally at [email protected].